Startup Systems
systems that power startups
Startup Systems
The Jenga situation
seths.blog
The early days are exciting. Customers are seen and heard and served. Variations are created and value is produced as problems are solved.
In the early days, the most celebrated employees are the ones who figure out what someone needs and then determines a way to fill that need.
Once the organization gains traction, it’s possible that a short-term profit maximizer will join the team. They push to treat the customers as replaceable flanges, almost identical, income opportunities to be processed. And the employees? They are expenses, not part of a team.
It can seem like the fastest way for a stable business to increase profits is simply to remove some sticks. Process more flanges with fewer expenses. Lower overhead, measure the easy stuff, do it faster.
We spend too much time dealing with shaky towers. The resilience of people connecting, of organizations evolving, of service and clarity and generative work is far too important to be threatened by a few hustlers who insist on measuring the wrong thing.
"A startup is a permissionless way to improve society"
Angles that spread usually check the following boxes:
- Surprising — presents unexpected new information or theories
- True — we actually believe it
- Important — has an impact on our behavior
- Relevant — related to domains we care about
- Cool — we think we’ll look impressive for sharing it
Nathan Baschez • How to Write Essays That Spread
Takeaways:
- Engineers continued to be the predominant function across the first three hires. Not shown in the chart, but 100% of companies hired at least one engineer among their first three hires .
- Interestingly, customer success/support continues to be a popular role for the first three hires. Of the non-engineer hires, almost a quarter of them are
Lenny Rachitsky • Hiring your early team
So what is systems thinking? In his book The Fifth Discipline , Peter Senge gives a systems thinking definition as “A discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static ‘snapshots.’ And systems thinking is a sensibility—for the subtle interconnectedness... See more
Systems Thinking vs Design Thinking, What’s the Difference?
Burnout cultures exhaust us through the week and force us to recharge during our time off. Healthy cultures provide daily space to refuel. - Adam Grant
Pick a customer instead of an idea: “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when you're starting a company, you often think you're picking an idea, but you're really picking a customer. It's actually pretty easy to change your idea, but it’s way harder to change the customer you're serving,” says Agrawal.